In January 2025 I wrote a post titled “What’s in a Name?” about the executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Tech companies like Google and Apple that once prided themselves on independent thinking and innovation were quick to bend the knee and adopt the terminology that the would-be dictator demanded. Since then, I’ve been wearing a t-shirt with the gulf’s original name, the name with which I was familiar when I grew up in Houston, Texas many decades ago.
Name-changing decrees have come to my new home now as well. As a result of his spat with the democratically-elected government of Canada, the would-be dictator further along in consolidating his regime, has decreed Lake Ontario, which borders New York State, to be called Lake America. Once again, Google and Apple bent the knee, obediently changing their map of the Great Lakes within the U.S. and putting Lake America in parentheses under Lake Ontario in maps outside the U.S. After writing a letter of complaint to Apple that went unanswered, I cancelled my free trial of AppleTV because I don’t want to pay for a service that will potentially censor its entertainment offerings to placate a dementia-ravaged despot with the emotional regulation of a toddler. I was also one of the people who downloaded MapQuest, the only map app that kept the original name, helping to put this legacy app in the #1 position. Unfortunately, I can only use MapQuest for walking or driving, as it doesn’t cover public transit; for that I need the MTA app.
Schoolchildren who learn the names of the Great Lakes often use the acronym HOMES: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior. Unless things change in the next two years, my grandchildren will be forced to memorize these same lakes with the acronym SHAME: Superior, Huron, America, Michigan, Erie.
SHAME captures the feeling I have of living under a nation ruled by a tyrant’s decree rather than by law. Forcing intelligent people to kowtow to ridiculous proclamations — though I’m starting to question the intelligence of our tech entrepreneurs — strikes me as the kind of ritual humiliation that anyone who’s been bullied in school will instantly recognize. It’s a public swearing of our fealty to the regime that also shows people outside the country how cowed and/or brainwashed we are. We can’t even use generally accepted terminology but must call things by the names our rulers order us to use. By using weird names for geographic locations, we appear isolated, apart from the rest of the world, which is precisely what the tariff regime, the attacks on our traditional allies, and the praise of Kim Jong Un’s hermit kingdom of North Korea intend to do. Dictators, like school bullies and domestic abusers, isolate their targets from friends. Then they strip their targets of agency and basic human dignity. Everybody is infantilized, dependent on the mercy of those in power for life itself. Everyone is forced to act ridiculous for the pleasure of the ruler and his inner circle.
It’s a small thing, but insisting on the internationally acknowledged names of geographical locations and punishing those companies that bend the knee via protests and boycotts is a way of maintaining our dignity and political agency. I will make sure my own grandchildren know the name of the lake that borders our own state, as it was before 77 million people voted to hand the country over to a “dictator on day one.” We should have HOMES in freedom and not SHAME under tyranny.
